Fresno Co. GOP contribution scrutinized

Published online on Thursday, Oct. 01, 2009

The Fresno County Republican Party is under the microscope for campaign contributions to a Southern California Assembly member that a leading political watchdog said look "suspicious."

In the spring of this year, the party's Central Committee received $30,000 from members of a San Diego County family, according to the committee's campaign filings. In the same time period, the committee gave a similar amount -- $28,500 -- to Joel Anderson, R-Alpine.

Individual donors can't give more than $3,900 to legislative candidates, but political parties can give as much as they want. It is against the law to coordinate contributions to skirt limits.

Stuart Weil, a member of the Fresno County Republican Central Committee, said the committee took the money from the San Diego County family with no strings attached.

"Everything is legal," he said.

But Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said the case raises questions.

"Circumstances indicate that it looks pretty suspicious, but we don't have all the facts," said Stern, former general counsel for the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

In a story on the transactions Thursday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that members of the Hamann family are frequent contributors to candidates in eastern San Diego County, including Anderson, who is expected to make a run for the state Senate.

Gregg Hamann, one of the donors, told the Union-Tribune that he could not recall why he gave the money to the Fresno County Republican Central Committee. Family members own a construction and property-management business, the newspaper reported.

The Hamanns gave $20,000 on May 22, the same day the Fresno County Republican Central Committee donated $19,000 to Anderson, according to the Central Committee's filings with the Secretary of State.

Weil said the committee wanted to help Anderson, noting he had visited Fresno County "a number of times."

He is a "great assemblyman and he'll make a great senator, and we need good people like that. He's our friend, and we want to help him out as much as we can."

So far, no complaints have been filed with the state's Fair Political Practices Commission, which oversees campaign-finance laws, said Roman Porter, the commission's executive director. He declined to answer questions about the case, but said the FPPC "requires [campaigns] to report the true source of all contributions received of $100 or more."